Speeches of Power, Resistance and New Codes in the National Strike in Colombia “Todo está muy paro” [Discursos de poder, resistencia y nuevos códigos en el Paro Nacional en Colombia: Análisis de la obra artística “Todo está muy paro”]

Abstract

In the context of the citizen demonstrations associated with the National Strike of Colombia, between April and June 2021, many artistic proposals were significant in social, physical and digital interaction. Some of these show new nuances of the relationship between art and society and show how art can generate resistance. One of them, is the calligraphic and poster proposal promoted by the artist Natalia Calao, “Todo está muy triste”, in which she took up codes of the recently extinct Antonio Caro. In it, every day of the strike left an inscription that accommodated the structure of the famous work by Caro, “Toda está muy Caro”. The schemes of creation of the work, its drifts in networks and its way of reaching the street, serve to reflect on how art can, in a digital society, bring new horizons of interaction with the citizenry. This paper reviews the aesthetic background of the work and we analyze some interesting phenomena that occurred by putting artwork, in the light of the street as a place of resignificance, memory as an exercise of the present and citizen appropriations and reappropriations, phenomena in which it tracks possibilities of resistance. © 2022 Universidad Complutense de Madrid. All rights reserved.